Call it The Brown Plan

We'll live or dies by the success of this bank recapitalisation plan and the willingness of other countries to adopt it. It's one of the most far-reaching and difficult decisions a prime minister has had to make since the formation of the NHS, and Brown is uniquely placed to have made it.


My suggestion is - call it the Brown Plan, and refer to it by this name where ever it's discussed. It will stick in the public consciousness for good or ill from now on.



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Re: Call it The Brown Plan (#1)

I did last night. This morning I read on ConHome, or similar, that they're baulking against it preferring "The Sarkozy Solution". Oh how they love the Europeans/French when it suits them, eh?

Re: Call it The Brown Plan (#3)

Looks like the Brits have come up with the solution to stabilise the global economy; even the Americans are considering taking similar measures. And no mention of 'nationalisation', only 'making a significant investment or taking shares' in these financial institutions. Its as good as it gets, by doing everything it takes.

Re: Call it The Brown Plan (#8)

I'm not claiming any originality! I've just spotted that the Times used the phrase on Friday. I'm just saying we just stand or fall by it - and the name should reflect that - Brown's triumph or Brown's downfall. I think it will work, and provides a model for the rest of the world.

Re: Call it The Brown Plan (#9)

The point is, anyone can come up with a 'plan'; why, Cameron has a whole pocketful of them. The question is, who's gonna implement it. So let's give credit where it is due... to Brown.

Re: Call it The Brown Plan (#2)

It might be more accurate to describe it as the Soros Plan, since what the government is now doing is exactly in line with the proposals set out by George Soros in the Financial Times of 1st October.

Re: Call it The Brown Plan (#4)

thought this was actually a version of the Swedish plan of a few years back?

Re: Call it The Brown Plan (#6)

While there is a precedent, and of course he's taken advice it is Brown's plan. He has implemented it.

The Swedish model was tiny in comparison with Brown's intervention, although it shows what a left-wing solution looks like, and that it can work, as I mentioned in my previous post.

Re: Call it The Brown Plan (#5)

The copyright for the bank recapitalisation plan belongs to Sweden who used it with great successs to refloat their banks in the early nineties. So Gord is typically claiming credit for other people's ideas.

But if you want for all of next year we can refer to  the "Brown Recession".

Re: Call it The Brown Plan (#7)

It's not unique in history, unlike the only right-wing proposal I've which is, effectively, let the whole edifice collapse.

The fact there is a precedent, albeit of a different order of magnitude is a plus for the scheme, not a negative.

The recession is world-wide, and while I can see why you'd want to blame Brown for that, It's Lamont and Lawson whose names will stick with the crises they personally engendered.

Bankers fiddle (#10)

Interesting even the FT lays into the bankers with a Bankers fiddle while public anger burns article.

... The devil is in what might happen if men in suits spend too long arguing about the detail.

Britain’s bank bosses and regulators probably did not have time to listen to the radio phone-ins over the weekend. If they had, they would have taken away a clear message: the public wants blood. People may not understand how the financial crisis happened, or even who was responsible. Bank customers certainly will not admit that they were even partly to blame for wolfing down the debt that was served up to them.

... There is a pool of clever, trained, private sector managers prepared to run and oversee banks in a new world of tight regulation and even tighter lending controls.

... The power of bankers to negotiate the detail of their deals, the structure of their balance sheet, the terms of their remuneration, even the timing of their own departure is dwindling fast.

Re: Bankers fiddle (#11)

Yes - and unfortunately, the public won't see the blood of those who were at the helm tof he crashing banks. It seems that the contracts were so badly written that the RBS chief will still get a £578,000 pension, even thought RBS has collapsed.

Re: Call it The Brown Plan (#12)

There is of course the problem that we don't have any gold reserves to sell off now the price is so high which could have easily paid off the banks and recapitalized them, this is perhaps Brown's most crucial mistake which will probably come up during any inquest into the systemic seizure of the financial system during the "Bank Crash of 2008".

When the "lots of other states who did the same as us" line comes up I will hasten to remind you most of those states aren't very good fiscally in comparison to a member of the G7.

Instead we've gone into....

More Borrowing.

We're now climbing up towards the 50% mark with the excessive re-capitalization of the banks. The idea does indeed mimic Sweden and Norway's similar crisis within the 1990's, however this is on a much, much larger scale.

There is also the major problem of the Sterling no longer being a reserve currency either, which it was for some time. Today the "reserve currency" is split between the Dollar and the Euro. The more we print to solve this problem, the less valuable it becomes.

Failing that there is the major problem of deferred taxation to pay this borrowing back which will fall onto the shoulders of the next government in a desperate attempt to re balance the books.

I just have this horrible echo in my head of the first Thatcher Government all over again having to ramp us taxation because of the massive amounts of borrowing that have gone on.

Between 2011-2012 are we going to see taxes rise in an attempt to pay off this massive weight around everyone's shoulders in order to keep the whole economy going?

I know overall I understand that this was a global problem, but I just feel better and long term planning could have been laid out for the inevitable recession.

Did Brown buy into his own words of "An end to Boom and Bust" a little too much? Did that single statement which he delivered with such vigour blinker him for the rest of his time as chancellor, ignoring all possibility of any kind of economic crisis?

I noticed in the Daily Mail interview he has now mysteriously added the word "Tory" to it, which thanks to the wonders of television and BBC Parliament's archive is disproved.

As much as the Brown plan has saved the day for now, spending £500 billion of our money, all the time grinning during his Press conference about the spend will probably still grate on people's nerves.

The Brown Plan may have saved the day overall, but it was a little slow getting here.

Re: Call it The Brown Plan (#13)

I love the idea that just because Sweden did a similar thing 30 years ago, Brown is somehow a fraud by implementing a similar solution now.  By that logic George Osbourne's conference speech should have been the Adam Smith speech, the Obama campaign should be the King campaign, and the Communist Manifesto would be the Bible Version 2.

Re: Call it The Brown Plan (#14)

I've got to say I agree. The whole "you copied my policy" thing is so risibly childish it makes me laugh.